Author Archive for Nicki Benson

Profile

Founder of Esperanza Education. Coordinator of the Spanish for Social Justice Teacher Network. Education Consultant for organizations such as Kwi Awt Stelmexw, UNICEF-Peru, and Innovations for Poverty Action. View full profile.

Posts by Nicki:

Simple Social Justice Lessons from the Spanish Classroom In earlier blog posts, Mary and I have described what we mean by Progressive Language Teaching and Social Justice Education. Today I would like to share a few examples of how I teach Spanish for social justice. It’s actually qui

My Work with UNICEF Peru – Part 1 In June 2013, I began a six month position as a Junior Professional Consultant in Education Research at UNICEF Peru in Lima. The position is part of the UN Professional Placement Program with the United Nations Association in Canada. My terms of

My Favourite Social Justice Organization and Their Work to Improve Public Education in the Americas In 2007, I was on my way back to Canada after a year of living in Spain. I wanted to find a way to bring together my passions for Spanish, education, and social justice and I thought th

The Question I Always Ask as a Language Learner, and the Importance of Context “¿Me entiendes?” (Do you understand me?) is one of the questions I have asked most frequently to Spanish-speakers around the globe. I really do wonder sometimes. I consider myself fluent in Spanish but I am

Avoiding Sexist Vocabulary in a Gendered Language In Spanish, all nouns and adjectives are assigned a gender, also referred to as grammatical gender. We have grammatical gender in English as well (for example, we say “he” or “she”, “boy” or “girl”, etc) but in Spanish even inanimate o

How Language Teachers can Promote Social Change At Esperanza Education, we believe strongly in the importance of bringing together language learning and social justice education. In fact, we believe that this kind of education is important in all aspects of life. But what is social ju

Get ready for the Esperanza Education blog: Language, Learning, and Culture! Starting on Monday July 1st 2013, this will be the place to find information and ideas on progressive language education. Expect a diverse selection of posts from our teachers on all aspects of learning and t

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